


The Nine Irregular Adjectives

by 2ndA



Series: Work That is Real (GK/HS AU) [2]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5574538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More High school AU. This falls between How to Take a Test and Commencement Means Beginning. It has a sort of piece-meal structure, like Test. The epigraph is by Rita Mae Brown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nine Irregular Adjectives

  _Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than money. That's a rotten bargain._

 

  
**++alius, alia, aliud,** _other, another (of several)_ **++**

Nate could add Teach for America to his resume and apply to the Kennedy School of Government. Nate could schedule an interview with that charter school in Burbank: they’re looking for someone to coach debate. Nate could move back home, get licensed to teach in Maryland (which has an excellent public school system as long as you’re not in Baltimore). Nate could call upon some of those famed Ivy League connections to work in a brokerage house or a think tank. Nate could accept Principal Mattis’s offer and become the first Latin teacher in the history of Mathilda Memorial High School.

 

  
**++ neuter, neutra, neutrum,** _neither (of two)_ **++**

It is called a Letter of Intent, and in the California Public Schools, it serves as a contract before the actual, binding employment agreement. Teachers have to indicate by April whether they are planning to return for the next school year, so the school system knows how many positions they’ll have to fill and what their applicant pool will look like. Nate’s never had to sign one before, but his two years with Teach for America are over. He is a free agent now.  
  
The whole system drives Brad up the wall and across the ceiling.  
  
“What kind of double-dealing, bait-and-switch, weasel bullshit is that?” he demands, the first time Nate brings it up. “Christ. Everywhere else, you either sign or you don’t, and nobody gets to know until you tell them. Now Mathilda wants to know who else might be interested—scratch that, they want to know what unfortunate bastards have no better options—and then, _maybe_ , they decide who gets the job offer. Last I heard, insider trading was fucking illegal.”  
  
Nate is halfway through listening to this outburst when he realizes that he’s frozen in astonishment, one running shoe untied and his fingers still in the laces of the other. It’s just—it’s not like Brad to get so worked up about…well, Nate hasn’t even made up his mind yet. He was just making conversation of the “so, how was your day, honey?” variety. Or at least, he thought he was. He’s not sure he likes his employer being compared to the Galleon Group.  
  
“Relax, Brad,” Nate says automatically, even though Brad _is_ relaxed. His voice is tight with annoyance, but the rest of him is casually slung out on the bench next to the front door as he rolls the kinks out of the ankle he broke on Mount Shasta. It’s eerie, how he can separate his emotions from his physical presence. Nate had mentioned the letter of intent just as they turned the corner of Brad’s street on the final stretch of eight miles. Brad’s shirt is patchy with sweat, but he’s not even breathing that hard, so Nate can’t tell if he’s flushed from exertion or irritation. He doesn’t look upset…but then, Brad _never_ looks upset: he just develops an icy rime of determination.  
  
“Think of it like, I don’t know….” Nate fishes for a military metaphor, “some sort of reenlistment package.”  
  
“Yeah, okay, so what are they offering in exchange for your freedom: more staff meetings, more detention duty, and a copy machine that’s broken so often Kinko’s should be charging you rent? When the hiring practices of the US military make more sense than those of your employer….” Brad shakes his head.  
  
“I know, I know,” Nate says, because the bizarre induction rituals of the Marines are something Brad’s complained about before. “No applications, just commitments.” He supposes there’s a similarity: whether you’re signing a letter of intent or a Marine Corps commitment, you’re still laying yourself open to rejection without any reciprocity. But that’s the way a lot of things start: Nate had kissed Brad midway through watching the Thanksgiving football highlights and for a solid 30 seconds afterwards, he hadn’t been sure whether he was about to get fucked into the floor or punched in the teeth.  
  
Brad looks at him, like he suspects Nate’s making fun of him. Nate blinks innocently, even though he is, a little (sometimes, it’s fun to wind Brad up and the Marine commitment rant once veered off into a discussion of some television commercial with dragons?).  
  
“Yeah, well,” Brad hauls himself off the bench. “You can get _committed_ to a mental hospital, too, if you’re crazy enough.”

 

  
**++nūllus, -a, -um,** _none, no_ **++**

Brad has seen this before, and it never ends well. Bright, naïve people convince themselves that they can change the system from inside. They are young and idealistic, they will slay the dragons. They work for years, put off other opportunities—other relationships—because they imagine there will be plenty of time later, after the mission is accomplished. They follow orders, even when those orders don’t make sense, because they believe that the ends will justify everything. Honorable men don’t think, even for an instant, that their leaders might be dishonorable. And so they are deceived. He’s seen this before; hell, he's _done_ this before. Fuck, he once tried to import secular democracy to an impoverished desert nation at gunpoint because the wisdom of the day demanded it. What was any of that for, if Nate’s going to make the same goddamn mistake? Fool me once…

 

  
**++tōtus, -a, -um,** _all, whole, entire_ **++**

Nate’s sister Katie is in LA for a conference and when Nate asks her where they should meet her, she suggests the Huntington Library. They are having an exhibit of Greek and Roman artwork, on loan from the Walters Art Gallery (Nate’s second favorite gallery in Baltimore; and of course, Nate would have multiple favorite galleries in the same city, of course he would rank them.)  
  
“She wants to meet up at an exhibit about ancient pottery?” Brad asks, straight-faced. “Are you _sure_ you two are related?”  
  
“I have been assured of this,” Nate replies, “She said something about taking the girl out of art history, but not being able to—”  
  
Brad leans over their mauled breakfast plates and kisses the rest of the sentence out of his mouth.  
  
“I think you were about to utter a cliché,” he explains solemnly when he pulls away, his own mouth looking so delicious that Nate wants to reach out and touch it. So he does, and Brad gives his thumb a playful nip.  
  
“And you saved me. My hero,” Nate rolls his eyes. Later, Nate will remember it all, the whole ordinary exchange. The entire thing will impress itself on his memory in vivid, Technicolor detail: the way Brad’s mouth tasted like coffee, the rasp of his unshaven jaw. The last kiss.

  
**++ uter, utra, utrum,** _which? (of two)_ **++**

Nate is not used to having to consult anyone about his plans. He’s independent and self-sufficient by nature. His parents believed in letting children make their own decisions—plus, Nate suspects he scared them a little when he was considering military service. After he opted for Dartmouth instead, they probably didn’t feel they could ever ask for more.  
  
Also, he’s never been someone to put off making a decision; soliciting other opinions can just be a delaying tactic, putting off the inevitable. He considers his options. He is privileged, he’s had a lot of opportunities, he should make them count for something. Many options, but really only two that matter: he could teach, or he could do something else. The world does not need another think-tank analyst as badly as Heather and Syed need to pass the California Standards Test, as badly as Anthony and his classmates need to learn how to write a persuasive essay. He signs the Letter of Intent: his _intent_ is to teach Latin and test prep and sophomore English Comp.

 

 

++ **alter, altera, alterum** , _the one, the other_ (of two)++

“Nate! Nate…is that—Etruscan?!” Katie hisses and darts across the gallery, leaving Brad and Nate facing a vitrine full of clay amphorae.    
Brad watches her go. “Yeah,” he says dryly, walking around the glass box to look from a different angle. He has to duck to read the labels on the lowest shelf. “Family resemblance. Still not seeing it. Nope, not at all.”  
  
“Shut up.” And then, “Hey, do you think they’d let me bring a group here for a field trip?”  
  
Brad doesn’t move out of his crouch, but his eyes find Nate’s from the other side of the glass box. “You’ve _got_ to be joking.” His voice, like his expression, is totally flat.  
  
Nate blinks. “I—wh…no. No, why would I be joking?”

Nate asks again as they pull into the lot of his apartment building in Mathilda, because Brad has barely said anything since he wished Katie a safe trip home.  
  
“Why would you think I was joking, Brad? About taking the kids to the Huntington? I can’t teach Latin out of books; that’ll just reinforce the idea that it’s a dead language. And the foreign language department has a budget for field trips, they just never use it…Madame Bruchard used to take French II to a French restaurant until a couple of junior got caught smoking weed in—”  
  
“Nate,” Brad turns off the ignition. “There is a reason Mathilda High School has never had a Latin teacher. Do not spend a year of your life trying to give those kids some…” his hands leave the steering wheel to sketch through the air. “Some idealized _thing_ that they do not want and won’t know how to use.” The cooling engine ticks four times before Brad even turns to look at him. “I can’t let you do that to yourself.”  
  
The decisiveness of the statement suddenly pisses Nate off. Who put Brad in charge? And how does he know anything about Nate’s kids? All he ever did was fix Mathilda’s computers, and then just until that tech grant died. It’s not like Nate hasn’t heard the _what good is a dead language_ argument…he just hadn’t expected it as part of a blanket assumption about what Nate’s students could and could not learn. Brad can fuck around all he wants with Nate, but he had better not fuck around with Nate’s kids.  
  
Nate meets Brad’s gaze cooly, “I don’t think you get to decide what I do to myself.”  
  
Brad sighs—weary, put-upon, like he’s disappointed because he didn’t expect this sort of nonsense. “Nate.”  
  
“ _Brad_.” Nate mimics, and he knows it’s childish, but he’s never dealt well with condescension. Brad blinks. Surprised. Maybe he’s used to people to just giving in when he uses that tone. Probably he expects that at least there will be a discussion…which is basically the same thing, since no one stands up against Brad for very long. Well, Nate is not one of his soldiers.  
  
Brad’s truck chimes in protest when Nate gets out because the keys are still in the ignition. He silences it by slamming the door. He hadn’t even bothered to roll up the window, so when he speaks, Brad can hear every word: “When I want your advice, Brad, I will ask for it. You can be assured of that. But I _haven’t_ asked, so I don’t need your thoughts on the matter. Nobody fucking spoke to you.”

 

++ **sōlus, -a, -um** , _alone++_

The last day of school is June 13 (June 8th for seniors), and the first back-to-school professional days are in the third week of August, so Nate has roughly seven weeks to fill.   That’s what it feels like: a huge, yawning emptiness like a desert that he must cross, step by step. He flies east for two weeks to see his family and attend the annual July 4th picnic in his aunt Patty’s backyard. Katie asks how Brad is doing and Nate says, “He’s fine. Why wouldn’t he be fine?” He doesn’t mention that he has not spoken to Brad in two months. Still, he must not sound as casual as he means to, because she does not mention Brad again.  
  
Rudy hires him on again to teach a couple of workshops about bicycle repair at the gym, which will help his Mathilda salary stretch through the summer.   “Mid-mornings Saturday are always popular, brother, but you gotta make room for serenity. Let me know what weekends you want off, and I’ll get Mike to pick those up,” Rudy says. The previous year, Nate had taken a week off to go hiking with Brad. This year, he informs Rudy, he is available whenever.  
  
When he's not working, Nate starts lesson-planning.  It's still summer, but he's got new classes and, really, what else does he have to do? He doesn’t like any of the commercially available curricula, so he pulls out all his old notes and starts from scratch. It goes well at the beginning: he quickly sorts lessons on number, direct object, indirect object, basic declensions. But once the basics are out of the way, he stalls. Possessive pronouns, the second declension, the nine irregular adjectives…the point where students know just enough to get themselves into trouble. Turns out anyone can handle the early stages, but you’ve got to persevere when things get hard.  
  
There is a lesson here, and it's not just Latin. Nate hadn’t appreciated it until it was over, but being in a relationship with Brad was…easy. Surprisingly so. Had he really thought about it in advance, the idea of dating a former Marine who routinely breaks the speed limit and owns more scuba gear than civilian shirts would have been intimidating. And, to be sure, Brad had the sort of piercing intelligence that suffered no fools. But no demanding phone calls, no passive-aggressive gifts, no _but what do_ you _want to do on Friday_? None of the drama that had sunk Nate’s college relationships. If Nate had to grade a pile of student essays or write up lesson plans, Brad pulled a book off the shelf or spent forty minutes doing crazy ninja upgrades on Nate’s crappy laptop. At some point, roughly a month after the first kiss, Brad had stacked the tumbled pillows, tugged Nate’s head down to rest on his shoulder, and said, “So, when’re you going home for Christmas? I’ll drop you at the airport if you want.” Nate had shivered as Brad’s fingers furrowed his hair, and just like that, they’d gone from fuck-buddies to something more. Teaching was hard. Living a continent away from his family was hard. Adjusting to a life in which he was no longer a wunderkind was hard. But being with Brad…that was so easy, in the beginning, that Nate was fooled into believing it would be easy forever.

 

++ **ūnus, -a, -um** , _one, alone_ ; (in the plural) _only++_

California gets a cold snap in late July, some sort of freak weather event blowing in from the Pacific, and for about five days straight, the temperatures in Oceanside drop precipitously. Mornings are cool enough for Brad to pull a fleece on when he comes back from the beach. He sits out on the deck drinking coffee and waiting for the sun to reach him. Idly, he flips through one of Nate’s books. He should do the adult thing and just pack up the few things Nate left in Oceanside when they…well, Brad refuses to call it a break-up. It’s been nearly three months since Brad put the truck in gear and left Nate behind in his apartment parking lot. But Nate never actually _told_ him to go away and never come back. Of course, Brad hasn’t called or texted or emailed: he doesn’t want to give Nate the opportunity to tell him to go away and never come back. Still, _Nate_ hasn’t called or texted or emailed, either. Everything is just as they left it on a Saturday afternoon in May, right down to the Dartmouth t-shirt, the toothbrush, the half-dozen books—still in Brad’s house.  
  
Brad puts down Nate’s book. He should start getting ready for work—a part-time gig that requires enough problem-solving to keep his brain from turning to mush but that could never be construed as world-changing. Brad is done with trying to change the world. That's why, when his grant at Mathilda had ended in December, he’d moved on to something else. He hadn’t discussed the decision with Nate, and it hadn’t made much of a difference with their relationship because the job hadn’t made much of a difference to Brad. It was a challenge: he’d agreed to do it to see if he could, and like all of his challenges, he moved right on to the next one when it was complete.  
  
Well. Brad thumbs through the book. Maybe he didn’t move on completely. There’s another gust of wind. It’s July, but it feels almost like fall, which makes Brad think of the beginning of school.

 

++ **ūllus, -a, -um** , _any_ ++

Nate needs Tacitus to finish this lesson plan, and he can’t find his copy. He has a sneaking suspicion that he left it at Brad’s place, but thinking about that feels like a mental bruise: sore when you push too hard. He remembers lounging in the ugly neon hammock Ray brought back from an ill-conceived trip to Tijuana, reading after a run. He’d lost the final sprint to Brad, as he always did, which meant Brad got the first shower (which meant Nate would give him about ten minutes and then go join him under the fabulous water pressure, as _he_ always did). Brad’s house had the Spartan simplicity of a base camp, but the bed, the shower, and all related linens were top-notch…Nate realizes that his thoughts have wandered right up the coast to Oceanside. That’s happening more and more, instead of less. He’s pretty sure that’s not the way a break-up is supposed to work.  
  
Of course, if they were really, definitively broken up, he would just call Brad up and demand the return of his book. Or at least chicken out and buy a new copy. But he doesn’t: somehow that feels like admitting something. Instead, he thinks there might be a copy in his trailer at school on the brick and board shelves that Brad—but he’s not thinking about that. He’s thinking about Tacitus. The Mathilda copy is not his preferred translation, but he’ll make do.

 

++++

Someone should have collected the key to the trailer that is Nate’s “extension classroom,” but in the chaos of June, no one ever had. Well, Nate thinks as he crosses the football field, that’s one advantage to Mathilda’s overcrowding. He'd crossed this same field exactly two years ago, as a brand new teacher.  But today there’s something… different about the trailer.  
  
Nate can see in greater detail as he approaches. The sides, which had weathered to a scaly, grimed beige, are now a uniform battleship grey. The screen that Mike Guitierrez busted out of the left-hand window (“ _So_ on accident, Mr. F. Honest!”) is now repaired with more than duct-tape. And there’s someone—is that _Ray_?—perched on the roof.  
  
“S’up, homes!” shouts Ray when he catches sight of Nate.  
  
Somewhere inside the trailer, Brad yells: “Ray, a little respect for your betters would not be entirely out of place.”  
  
Ray stretches out on the roof so he can hang upside down in the doorway. “How do you know I’m talking to _my betters_? I could be out here talking to fucking Trombley for all you know.”  
  
“If it’s approaching on two legs, Ray, I think it’s safe to assume it’s surpassed you, evolutionarily speaking.”  
  
“Even Trombley?” Ray yelps. “ _Trombley?!_ ”  
  
“Don’t care,” Brad calls, shortly. “If it _is_ Trombley, get him to hold those wires while I try—”  
  
Nate never learns what Brad is planning to try, because he stops talking when he reaches the doorway and sees Nate. He’s wearing jeans and steel-toed boots and an old PT shirt with his name stenciled on it, the kind he retires for chores around the house. Nate knows the back is worn threadbare from his field pack, the outlines of his tattoo vaguely visible through the thin fabric. Nate also knows every millimeter of that tattoo. There is some knowledge you just can’t unlearn.  
  
Brad looks at Nate. Nate looks at Brad.  
  
“Not Trombley,” Nate says finally.  
  
Suddenly, above them, there is a burst of music: Johnny Cash. Ray nearly falls off the roof trying to get to his cellphone. “S’up? Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. See you there.”  
  
“Yo,” Ray slithers off the roof, surprisingly graceful. “Brad, that was Walt. He says to tell you slavery’s been outlawed, for like, a hundred and fifty years. Which I do kinda think I learned all about in Espera’s class, but you know how Mr. Espera likes to go on and on about things and I might not have been totally, like, paying a lot of attention.  But Walt takes kick-ass notes, so I really think you should trust him on the slave thing.  So, anyway, Walt says you gotta let his people go!” Ray concludes, earnestly.  
  
It takes Brad a moment to reorient his attention from Nate to Ray. “And where exactly will you go, Ray?”  
  
Ray shrugs. “Dunno, probably Dairy Queen. Beth Kilmer works the afternoon shift and she has the hots for Walt, so she gives him free stuff.”  
  
Wordlessly, Brad pulls out his wallet and tosses it to Ray, who extracts some cash, and tosses it back. He looks back and forth from Brad to Nate like he’s going to say something, but finally just gives an awkward little wave—“Peace out”—and sets off across the playing fields.  
  
“Did you actually _break into my trailer_?” Nate asks at last.  
  
Brad finally seems to realize that he’s still holding a pair of electricians’ pliers is his hand and tucks them away into his toolbelt. But then he’s got nothing to do with his hands, so he settles at parade rest.  
  
“Maybe. I prefer to think of it as liberating the fusebox. The wiring is almost done. You won’t have to teach Latin in a firetrap.”  
  
Nate thinks Brad wouldn't want him teaching under any circumstances, but he doesn't say that. He’s had a lot of time to think about it, and he suspects Brad isn't angry about work—at least, not about _Nate's_ work. What he does say is, “I can be committed to more than one thing, you know.”  
  
“That sounds like a lot of work,” Brad allows.  
  
“I’m not afraid of hard work,” Nate replies. “And it would be worth it, to me.”  
  
“I was on the payroll here. Mathilda pay is for shit.”  
  
“I’m not talking about Mathilda.”  
  
“I’ll still hate your job,” says Brad, warningly.  
  
“But as long as _I_ don’t hate my job…?”  
  
Brad shrugs in the direction of the trailer, a casual lifting of one shoulder that is meant to express how completely he doesn’t care—it’s a gesture that Nate didn’t even realize he’d missed until he sees it. “I don’t understand how this can make you happy.”  
  
“Can you just trust me when I say that it does? It really does.”  
  
Brad sits down on the landing of the rickety wooden steps leading up to the trailer. His long legs dangle practically to the ground, but he can look Nate square in the face. “I trust your judgment.  I do.  But, the thing about work is…Nate, it’s just _work_. It pays the bills, but even if it feels like you’re doing something worthwhile now—it won’t make you happy forever.”  
  
“Maybe not,” it’s Nate’s turn to shrug as he steps into the space between Brad's knees. “But I don’t need work to make me happy forever. That’s what I have you for.”  
  
Gently, Brad shifts the tips of his left-hand fingers from his knees to the hem of Nate's t-shirt, the only part he can reach without being completely ridiculously gay about touching. “So,” he says, as casually as if the last three months never happened, “Walt and Beth Kilmer?”  
  
Nate grins, flooded by relief as buoyant and encompassing as the tide. “It'll never last.”


End file.
